Thursday, March 23, 2006

-- Essential Additions for the Workplace Vocabulary:

1. BLAMESTORMING: Sitting around in a group, discussing why a deadline has missed or a project failed, and who was responsible.

2. SEAGULL MANAGER: A manager who flies in, makes a lot of noise, craps on everything, and then leaves.

3. ASSMOSIS: The process by which some people seem to absorb success and advancement by kissing up to the boss rather than by working hard.

4. SALMON DAY: The experience of spending an entire day swimming up stream only to get screwed and die in the end.

5. MOUSE POTATO: The on-line, wired generation's answer to the couchpotato.

6. STRESS PUPPY: A person who seems to thrive on being stressed out and whiny.

7. IRRITAINMENT: Entertainment and media spectacles that are annoying but you find yourself unable to stop watching them. The Anna Nicole show or the Bachelor is a prime example.

8. PERCUSSIVE MAINTENANCE: The fine art of whacking the crap out of an electronic device to get it to work again.

9. ADMINISPHERE: The rarefied organizational layers beginning just above the rank and file. Decisions that fall from the adminisphere are often profoundly inappropriate or irrelevant to the problems they were designed to solve.

10. 404: Someone who's clueless. From the World Wide Web error message "404 Not found" (meaning that the requested document, like the person's brain, could not be located).

11. GENERICA: Features of the North American landscape that are exactlythe same no matter where one is, such as fast food joints, strip malls, and subdivisions.

12. OHNOSECOND: That minuscule fraction of time in which you realize that you've just made a BIG mistake.

13. WOOFYS: Well Off Older Folks.

14. CUBE FARM: An office filled with cubicles.

15. PRAIRIE DOGGING: When someone yells or drops something loudly in a cube farm, and people's heads pop up over the walls to see what's going on.

16. CROP DUSTING: Surreptitiously farting while passing through a cube farm, then enjoying the sounds of dismay and disgust (leads to PRAIRIE dogging)